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This Article Contains Spoilers -
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Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Spider-Man has declared that this article is still under construction. |
| “ | Look, man, I'm so sorry for the things that I said back in the day, the things that I did. Man, I've wanted to apologize to you so many times. I guess I was worried it would've triggered something, or whatnot. But maybe it was just best to leave the past where it is. | „ |
| ~ Mike apologizes to Daniel for his past behavior. |
Michael "Mike" Barnes is the tertiary antagonist of The Karate Kid Part III and a major character in Cobra Kai.
He is portrayed by Sean Kanan.
Biography[]
The Karate Kid, Part III[]
Mike Barnes was hired by Terry Silver to defeat Daniel LaRusso in the All Valley Karate Championship, in exchange for 25% (later 50%) ownership of his new Cobra Kai dojos. He constantly torments Daniel and tries his best to force Daniel into signing an application for the All Valley Karate Tournament (which Daniel chooses not to enter because he has no reason to fight) until Daniel agrees when he threatened to push him and his friend Jessica Andrews off the cliff. When Silver, Mike, and John Kreese reveals their plan to Daniel, Mr. Miyagi arrives at the Cobra Kai dojo and defeats the trio. After learning of Cobra Kai's plan, he finally agrees to train Daniel for the tournament.
At the tournament Mike (under Silver's instructions) to deliberate fights with Daniel by scoring points and then losing them with penalties. Despite his situation, Daniel manages to defeats him in a sudden death match with the kata that Miyagi taught him earlier. After being defeated, Mike starts pounding the ground in frustration.
Interim Years[]
Following his loss, Mike was banned from karate. Mike then found himself working many odd jobs, one of them being at a furniture store named, Agoura Fine Furnishings, where he meets their owner, who helped him learn he could do something with his hands other than fight. Mike became engaged to his daughter, Michelle, and became the co-owner of the furniture store. His life has become better since then.
Cobra Kai[]
Season 5[]
One day at his furniture store, while Mike was on a call with his wife about the delivery of their new furniture sets from Japan, he was interrupted and approached by his former arch-rival, Daniel LaRusso, who suspects that Terry Silver is recruiting him to run his Cobra Kai dojos across the valley. Daniel threatens the worker but is confused about what's going on. Mike refreshes Daniel when he shows him the store and tells Daniel that he is the actual owner.
He apologizes for misinterpreting his conversation and Mike also apologizes for the torment he put him through. He tells him that he wanted to leave the past behind, his defeat banned him from karate, and also praises Daniel for his successful life. The two then talk about Silver and Mike states that he hasn't talk to him in years and can't do anything to stop him. Daniel is happy that Mike is an old Cobra Kai student who is not aggressive to him. After, Daniel and Mike playfully spar but Chozen Toguchi steps in and fights him. Daniel then breaks up the fight and tells Mike it was a misunderstanding. Mike then tells about one his attorneys and Daniel calls him through a voicemail to talk about Terry Silver. He allows Chozen to buy his couch and changes the price to $2,000 instead of $1,200 for attacking him and his employees earlier. Terry finds out about this and burns down Mike's furniture store, shocking the latter when he arrived at the place from the parking lot.
On the night when Daniel, Johnny Lawrence, and Chozen are celebrating and using a limo to head to another bar, Mike hijacks the limo and drives them all to a rural area. He then viscously grabs Daniel out of the limo and accuses him of ruining his life while getting into a brief skirmish with Johnny until Daniel and Chozen intervened and introduces Mike to Johnny. Mike states that his life was fine until Daniel showed up which resulted the destruction of his store, Mike being broke, and his wife left him. Daniel tells him that it was Silver who burned down his store and promises to do what he can to help Mike rebuilt his business. Mike realizes Daniel's right, and he, Chozen, and Johnny go to Terry's house to get revenge while leaving Daniel in the middle of nowhere as he refuses with the idea due to being drunk.
Mike, Johnny, and Chozen arrive at Silver's house and breaks in. Mike confronts his former boss about his store. Reminding the trio that trespassing is a crime, Silver sends one of his senseis to deal with the trio. Mike holds his own against one of Silver's senseis, but is knocked out from behind quickly. He later regains consciousness and saves Johnny's life by beating the two hired Cobra Kai sensei's trying to kill him. Mike, Johnny, and an injured Chozen heads to the Cobra Kai dojo just as Silver has been defeated and arrested for his crimes, with Mike reconciling with Daniel once more. He takes Chozen to an ambulance to recover his injuries from his duel with Silver. Daniel sees in the limo that Mike has stolen a Rembrandt painting from Silver's mansion to cover up the damages from his destroyed furniture store.
Season 6[]
Mike has since started using a warehouse to restart up his furniture business. He is also shown still wearing his wedding ring, implying he and Michelle eventually reconciled.
When the Sekai Taikai requires 6 players to compete and Daniel and Johnny are struggling on who they should pick. They hire Mike for the weekend in order to get an unbiased judge to decide which students of his dojo should go to the Sekai Taikai. Barnes, when he's addressing the students, makes it very clear that this is going to be a baptism by fire for them, for whoever is fortunate enough and strong enough to make it through the tests that he sets up to determine who deserves to go. It's also revealed that he wanted compete in the Sekai Taikai during his teen years, but he wasn't due to his loss to Daniel in 1985. Mike then talks to Daniel about their last encounter at the dojo and is happy to be back.
During the first phase of the training, Mike tells them they have to have speed, endurance, strength and teamwork to survive the first round. After, he picks twelve people to advance to the next phase. He picks the obvious choices in Hawk, Robby, Miguel, Sam and Tory. The other seven he picks are Mitch (whom Mike nicknames "Muscles," to the latter's delight), Kenny, Chris, Nate, Demetri, Anthony, and Devon while Bert and the rest of the students are eliminated. The next day, Mike has the students do a battle royale where each of the twelve students need to steal each other's flags. Devon, however, feels that Barnes is not paying enough attention to her, this angers Johnny. Daniel also sees that Mike is starting to act like his old self back in the 1980s. After the challenge, Tory, Miguel, Robby and Sam are chosen to go to Barcelona. However, Hawk, Demetri, Kenny, and Devon are tied and Mike will re-evaluate the scores.
At night, Johnny goes to Mike's shop and tries to apologize. However, Mike sees it as Johnny trying to follow up about Devon and Mike explains that she is in the bottom. The two get into an argument which leads to a fight between the two former Cobra Kai's. The fight proves to be even until Barnes kicks Johnny to the ground. Believing he won, he insults Johnny by calling his karate a joke, the same insult he used on Daniel in their All Valley 1985 match, but is then kicked by the latter. Barnes goes back to fighting Johnny, but the latter defeats him by countering his strikes with Miyagi-Do moves before kicking him into a table, leading to Barnes conceding defeat. Mike admits to Johnny that since the destruction of his store, he has been longing for a fight and that going back to karate helped him get back on track. He then agrees to give Devon another shake. In the morning, he holds a find-the-flag competition to determine the final two choices for the Sekai Taikai. While the race is happening, Mike apologizes to Daniel about how he's been acting and and explains how part of his old self got out of his system after his fight with Johnny, something Daniel didn't know about. In the end, both Demetri and Devon win, and Mike proudly announces them as the winners. Daniel and Johnny thanks him for his help. He then wishes Miyagi-Do good luck in the tournament and parts ways with them.
Personality[]
| “ | Don’t even think about backing out, man! ‘Cause then I’ll really be pissed, and this… Well this will all seem like a happy memory compared to what I do to you, and what we all do to her. | „ |
| ~ Mike Barnes threatens Daniel and Jessica in The Karate Kid III |
A young Mike was an extremely aggressive, competitive, intimidating and highly skilled tenth-degree black belt Karate champion. During his first meeting with Silver, he was shown to be a very good young businessman as he immediately tried to earn more than what it was initially proposed in his deal with Terry, and was willing to do anything in order to secure his financial future which resulted on his multiple threats and attacks on Daniel LaRusso. Mike is portrayed as a near-psychopathic brute, and the greatest threat Daniel ever faced. Daniel was even more scared of Mike than he was of Chozen Toguchi, who tried to kill him. Barnes committed numerous crimes over the course of the film, including assault, attempted murder, death and rape threats, stalking, grand theft and vandalism under Terry Silver's command. As a fighter, Barnes was known for breaking the rules of conduct which earned him the name of "the Bad Boy of Karate". Despite all this, in Mike was shown to have at least some sympathy, like telling Daniel that he was "doing this to himself" while beating him up.
In the tournament, Barnes was so abusive that Daniel did not even want to continue the fight because he was afraid of what Mike might do to him. Barnes also beat Daniel so badly to the point where he was too scared to get off of the mat, and proceeded to profanely and verbally abuse him, Mr. Miyagi, and his Karate, both of which he deemed a "joke", hurling in numerous racial slurs about Mr. Miyagi. This is a feat of sheer vileness that no other Karate Kid villain has expressed. Mike's behavior and actions in the third film are similar to Johnny Lawrence and Dutch from the original The Karate Kid and Chozen in The Karate Kid Part II. Unlike the other three, however, Mike was far more dangerous, aggressive, and angry. Unlike Johnny and Chozen, who only became bullies because of their influences by their mentors John Kreese and Sato Toguchi, Mike had just chosen to be a bully and possessed no morals unlike Johnny and Chozen, who possessed a certain amount of honor. Barnes was such a ruthless opponent during the 1985 All-Valley Tournament that his conduct singlehandedly got the Cobra Kai Dojo banned permanently, which forced him to quit karate.
Fortunately, Mike changed his ways after his big loss at the tournament, hitting rock bottom similar to Johnny. He ultimately cleaned up his act, got married and became a furniture store owner. Mike explains that when he got involved in the furniture business, he realized he could "do something with [my] hands other than fight", possibly implying that he was raised to be an obsessive karate champion by parents who only wanted him to succeed financially, which would explain his behavior in The Karate Kid Part III. He apologized to Daniel for what he did to him in the past. However, he still maintains some aggressions, such as fighting Chozen when the latter attacks him, attacking Daniel and accusing him because he believed he was responsible for his furniture store being burned down even though he didn't, and attacking Silver's men in a fit of rage. While he did retain some aggressive behavior, he also showed that he was far more reasonable. This was shown when Daniel and Chozen explained it was Terry that had burnt down his store. Realizing that the two were telling the truth, he immediately redirected his aggression to Terry. He also demonstrated his kindness by helping Chozen after he was injured during his fight with Silver and saving Johnny when he was being overpowered by the last two senseis.
After being convinced by Daniel to help train his students for the Sekai Taikai, Mike begins to feel power that he has wanted to feel since 1985, making him arrogant and insensitive like his younger self was. However, after being defeated by Johnny in a fight, this ends the power Barnes wanted and he goes back to being the changed man.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- During the end of Season 4, Silver explains that he will recruit old friends to help out Cobra Kai. This caused fans to hint that Silver was talking about Mike Barnes; however, it wasn't true, and it turned out Barnes has become a changed man, running a furniture business.
- Mike Barnes is the third rival of Daniel LaRusso to be redeemed, following Johnny Lawrence and Chozen Toguchi. Just like Lawrence, the two of them were influenced by their mentors such as Terry Silver and John Kreese that turned into a villain.
- Barnes is the third ex-rival to become one of the senseis of the Miyagi-Do Karate for the preparation of Sekai Taikai in the sixth season.
External Links[]
- Mike Barnes on the Villains Wiki
- Mike Barnes on the Karate Kid Wiki
- Mike Barnes on the Wikipedia
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The Karate Kid (1984) | ||